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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

L'Oreal Ads Banned in U.K.

The British Advertising Standards Authority has blocked a Lancome ad featuring Julia Roberts and a Maybelline ad with Christy Turlington from publication because of complaints of the image looking overly Photoshopped. Both companies are owned by L’oreal, and acknowledge retouching the images but state that they aren’t too unrealistic.

According to The Guardian, Jo Swinson, a member of Parliament said in a complaint to the ASA that the images are “overly perfected and unrealistic”. In Roberts’ ad for Lancome’s Teint Miracle foundation, her skin appears flawless while Turlington’s ad for Maybelline’s The Eraser shows portions of her skin with and without the product. Swinson’s issue is that Roberts’ ad makes her face look wax-like. For Turlington’s ad, the company stated:

L’Oréal UK admitted that Turlington’s image had been “digitally retouched to lighten the skin, clean up makeup, reduce dark shadows and shading around the eyes, smooth the lips and darken the eyebrows”. However, it claimed there were still signs of ageing, such as crow’s feet, and that the image “accurately illustrated” the achieveable results.

The company also told The Independent that she looks so good in the ad because her skin is naturally flawless. Swinson says the ban “sends a powerful message to advertisers—let’s get back to reality.” Although the ad is banned in the UK, those of us in the States will bare witness to these false images of perfection by L’Oreal in the near future. What do you guys think? Should these photos be less touched up and represent more realistic images or is banning these photo edited images going too far?